And He Became

Suppose the mantle of divinity had settled on him
in a stroke
of fiery proclamation, dividing him forever from the brotherhood
whose commonness declared so poignantly
the purpose of it all:

The miracle of the unmiraculous, the reverberation in recurrence.
I remember him as God on earth and am amazed, but I am altered as I am,
not because of magnitude or differences in him, but for the sameness

of his life and mine which introduces to my every days the reverence
for the possibility of sameness in our souls and destinies
of joy into the morning of becoming.

That Mary bore him, that she was first a woman great with child,
conceived however awesomely in the loving trust
that any woman gives to opening herself to promise …

that he was born an infant, his potential secreted in pores and cells,
the miracle of manhood harbored private despite the star
and those who’d prophesied or even augured godhood in the straw …

that through the silent years he somehow grew, that he waxed
strong in spirit, filled with wisdom as any schoolboy might in finding
what, with grace of God, his limbs and head and heart could do …

that even being what he was at twelve—about his “Father’s business”—
He went down with them, his half-bewildered parents,
to Nazareth from the temple and was subject unto them …

that Mary, mother, women, kept all these sayings in her heart
and waited, patient, watched as he increased in wisdom,
and in stature and in favour with God and man …

that having increased and learned … by the things that he suffered,
he found his hour and met his fate, conditioned by his journey
as much as by his birth for multitudes, Gethsemane and Calvary …

that he, at the end, was beset by frailty—O, … let this cup …
and never made impervious to joy or fear or grief, but needed strength
even for his ultimates—Why hast thou forsaken me? …

that he became it all—Forgive them for they know not …
in that increase accessible to humanness through what’s divine in us,
and in reaching always as I may reach to “my Father … greater than I” …

whose knowing made miracle the miracle of having his only begotten
so akin with me that all he was and is, in lovingkindness,
his godliness within my human realm releases me to understand and love:

That though I shall have tribulation, I may be of good cheer,
for he has overcome the world and my heart shall rejoice
in joy no man taketh from me in my needing and trying to become.